Eileen Vartan Barker is a professor in sociology, an emeritus member of the London School of Economics (LSE), and a consultant to that institution's Centre for the Study of Human Rights. She is the chairperson and founder of the Information Network Focus on Religious Movements (INFORM) and has written studies about groups she defines as cults and new religious movements (NRMs).
Psychology of religion consists of the application of psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to the diverse contents of religious traditions as well as to both religious and irreligious individuals. The extraordinary range of methods and frameworks can be helpfully summed up regarding the classic distinction between the natural-scientific and human-scientific approaches. The first cluster proceeds by means of objective, quantitative, and preferably experimental procedures for testing hypotheses regarding the causal connections among the objects of one's study. In contrast, the human-scientific approach accesses the human world of experience using qualitative, phenomenological, and interpretive methods, with the goal of discerning meaningful rather than causal connections among the phenomena one seeks to understand.
Prem Pal Singh Rawat, born 10 December 1957, is an international speaker also known formerly as Maharaji. Rawat's teachings include a meditation practice he calls "Knowledge", and peace education based on the discovery of personal resources such as inner strength, choice, appreciation and hope.
Hans Rām Singh Rawat, called Shrī Hans Jī Mahārāj and by various other honorifics, was an Indian religious leader.
The Divine Light Mission was an organization founded in 1960 by guru Hans Ji Maharaj for his following in northern India. During the 1970s, the DLM gained prominence in the West under the leadership of his fourth and youngest son. Some scholars noted the influence of the Bhagavad Gita and the Sant Mat tradition, but the western movement was widely seen as a new religious movement, a cult, a charismatic religious sect or an alternative religion. DLM officials said the movement represented a church rather than a religion.
In modern English, a cult is a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, or by its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. This sense of the term is controversial, having divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia, and has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study. The word "cult" is usually considered pejorative.
The core of Prem Rawat's teaching is that the individual’s need for fulfillment can be satisfied by turning within to contact a constant source of peace and joy. Rather than a body of dogma, he emphasizes a direct experience of transcendence, which he claims is accessible through the four techniques of meditation which he teaches. He calls these techniques "Knowledge" and says that Knowledge will take "all your senses that have been going outside all your life, turn them around and put them inside to feel and to actually experience you."
Stephen A. Kent, is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He researches new religious movements, and has published research on several such groups including the Children of God, the Church of Scientology, and newer faiths operating in Canada.
American civil religion is a sociological theory that a nonsectarian quasi-religious faith exists within the United States with sacred symbols drawn from national history. Since the 19th century, scholars have portrayed it as a cohesive force, a common set of values that foster social and cultural integration. Its current form was developed by sociologist Robert Bellah in 1967 in the article, "Civil Religion in America". According to Bellah, Americans embrace a common civil religion with certain fundamental beliefs, values, holidays, and rituals in parallel to, or independent of, their chosen religion.
This list is of topics related to Prem Rawat (Maharaji).
James Victor Downton, Jr. is a sociologist known for his research on charismatic leadership, activism, and new religious movements. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1968 with his thesis, Rebel leadership: revisiting the concept of charisma, a subject he developed more fully in his 1973 book, Rebel Leadership: Commitment and Charisma in the Revolutionary Process. He was the first to coin the term "Transformational leadership", a concept further developed by James MacGregor Burns, and one of the key concepts in leadership research over the past 25 years.
Who is Guru Maharaj Ji?, published in 1973 by Bantam Books is a non-fiction book about Guru Maharaj Ji, now known as Prem Rawat. Edited by Charles Cameron, the book claims to be an "authentic authorized story", and was written when Maharaj Ji was aged 15. The initial printing was of 125,000 copies. A Spanish-language edition was also published in 1975, as Quién es Guru Maharaj Ji.
Millennium '73 was a three-day festival held on November 8–10, 1973 at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, United States, by the Divine Light Mission (DLM). It featured Prem Rawat, then known as Guru Maharaj Ji, a 15-year-old guru and the leader of a fast-growing new religious movement. Organizers billed the festival as the most significant event in human history which would usher in a thousand years of peace.
Bibliography of Prem Rawat and related organizations lists bibliographical material regarding Prem Rawat and organizations like Divine Light Mission, Elan Vital and The Prem Rawat Foundation.
Satpal Maharaj, also known as Shri Satpal Ji Maharaj, is a spiritual master and an Indian politician, serving as the current tourism, cultural and irrigation minister in the cabinet of Government of Uttarakhand. He is born to Shri Hans Ji Maharaj and Shri Rajeshwari Devi Ji. He is also a National Executive Member of BJP. He is the founder of Manav Utthan Sewa Samiti.
John A. Saliba is a Maltese-born Jesuit priest, a professor of religious studies at the University of Detroit Mercy and a noted writer and researcher in the field of new religious movements.
Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith is a sociological book based on field study of a group of Unification Church members in California and Oregon. It was first published in 1966 and written by the sociologist John Lofland. It is considered to be one of the most important and widely cited studies of the process of religious conversion, and one of the first modern sociological studies of a new religious movement.
David Alfred Martin, FBA was a British sociologist and Anglican priest who studied and wrote extensively about the sociology of religion.
Janet Liebman Jacobs is an American sociologist specializing in gender and religion. Jacobs' research focuses on women, religion, ethnicity, genocide and the social psychology of gender. She has authored seven books, including Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews, for which she won the Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory, and The Holocaust Across Generations: Trauma and its Inheritance Among Descendants of Survivors, for which she won the 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the American Sociological Association.
Lawrence Alan Babb is the Willem Schupf Professor of Asian Languages & Civilizations and an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Amherst College, Massachusetts. He specializes in Indian civilization, and Asian Religion and Society. He is an author of numerous books on rituals, caste system, myths, beliefs and ritual practices in South Asian society and religions.
